TC-1 News from 2001

TC-1: Technical Committee on Electrical Contacts, Connectors, and Cable

The scope of this Committee is to be the focal point within the IEEE CPMT Society for electrical contacts, electrical connectors, and interconnecting cable. Its membership consists of individuals having an interest in the research, development, manufacture, and utilization of electrical contacts and devices that contain them. The Committee holds regularly scheduled meetings and functions through the Holm Organization and through task forces having specific objectives. The Committee sponsors or supports conferences, publications, educational, standardization, and other activities.

The 2001 IEEE Holm Conference on Electrical Contacts was held in Montreal September 10 to 12. This was the 47th Annual conference in North America where professionals presented and discussed the latest developments in the field of electric contacts. This year, we had 91 attendees including 47 from USA, 27 from Europe, 10 from Asia, and 1 from Africa. The lower than usual registration is obviously because of the slow economy.

In the middle of the morning session on September 11, we were all shocked by the news break about the tragedy at the World Trade Center. The conference was briefly suspended while we all had to call home and make contingency plans with the travel. When the conference reconvene after an hour of interruption, we had a moment of silence for the unfortunate loss of lives and pray for world peace.

The technical program was very successful with 42 papers in 10 sessions. Papers were presented on electric contacts in switches, relays and connectors, new contact materials and coatings, arc fundamentals, thermal models, finite element analysis and corrosion. More details of the program and abstracts can be found in our web site.

On Monday night (9/10), we also had a successful social event to the La Sucrerie de la Montagne in the countryside of Montreal. We discovered the beauty of a natural maple-grove and enjoyed the hospitality of the Quebecois pioneer era. This annual Monday social event is becoming a tradition when the conference attendees get to chat more freely with their colleagues. We had over 60 participants with many spouses attending also.

In the awards luncheon, we presented the 2000 Holm Conference Prize Paper Award to Dr. Eisuke Takano for his paper "Contact Current Distortion Due to Tunnel Effects". Gerry Witter, TC1 Chairman, also announced the establishment of the Morton Antler Invited Lecture through endowment of a grant from the Antler family. Mort has been a long time Holm conference contributor, lecturer and organizer. The first invited lecture will be in 2002.

TC-1 also runs a 3-4 days intensive course on electrical contacts annually with up to 40 students. The course has been very successful in teaching engineers the physics and practice of contact designs and selections. The course is a favorite for switch, relay, circuit breaker, contactor, and connector engineers from automotive, power distribution and telecommunication fields. The 2001 course was held in Pittsburgh June 10-14. The 2002 course will be June 10-13 in Washington DC.

For more information on many special events organized by this committee such as annual IEEE Holm conference, intensive course, international conference, CD-ROM library and link to other societies, please visit our web site at www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/cpmt/tc1.

Photo Gallery from 2001 IEEE Holm Conference

--- submitted by Chi Leung, cleung@amidoduco.com